Mrs Tambourine Man: Interview with Singer Cat Power

Charlyn, I would like to talk to you about heroes. Do you have any?

(laughs) The baseball player Hank Aaron from Atlanta, who played for the Boston Braves, was probably my first hero. (laughs) But as I got older, my picture of a hero grew and changed. And over the years, there may be many heroes. I’ve learned, after already having travelled the world since my 20s, that sometimes a hero could be a mother, perhaps in South Africa, with a 20-gallon water jug on her head, holding two babies and five baskets. And that, to me, is heroic:  to be able to walk a mile every day to obtain water and food while taking care of children without any sort of income, money, electricity, transportation, school or help in that way. So I think there’s that style of hero, which is an everyday hero. A more quiet hero, not observed and unrewarded. To me, at my age now, those are the heroes to me: the ones that don’t give up and continue to bless the world around them in the smallest ways with little or no means of economic stature. I think that maybe true heroism is just being a human again.

Is Bob Dylan a hero to you on a musical level?

I idolized Bob Dylan in my early 20s. I felt like he was a mythical creature: part genius, part Jesus, part boyfriend. But I’ve gotten older, and I’ve left those myths in my younger romantic self. When I’ve watched myself grow up a worker in song as well, the balance of his greatness became much more relative to the more and more artists that I met. The person I carry in my heart now who is Bob Dylan from a middle-aged woman’s perspective who is a single mom.

What was it like for you as a young female musician growing up at a time where heroes were mostly men?

I would say it is still the same. When I was young, I didn’t have female heroes. Like most girls, I felt very alone in a world of sex objects. There are definitely more entrances and exits and more identities of women in the arts and in all industries now, but I’ve witnessed the same mindset and the same challenges, the same obstacles, the same struggles as back than. Women are still continually judged on their behaviour, their look, their sense of sexuality, their weight, their words. There we are, it’s the same. We’re just louder. And we have more of us in the field. I don’t think we’ve even scratched the surface of our collective power at all.

For your new album, you decided to cover Bob Dylan songs. For your concert at the Isarphilharmonie, you will repeat his legendary 1966 live concert song by song. Why?
There’s a reason that the generation of boomers loved Bob Dylan. Children like me grew up listening to him because my parents were obsessed with escaping the 1950s, which is where we’re heading right now but without economic growth. But there were things happening leading up to my decision to repeat that concert just as Dylan played it 1966: They had banned books in America, abortion rights were taken away, they were erasing Black history. I thought to myself, I should probably record this event as a document. I realized the situation and America’s power: If they were beginning to do these things in America during a democracy, then what the hell would happen in the next couple of years in this country – which is where we are now. I thought if I record this, it’s a testament of what Bob was trying to say back then.

What did he want to say?

These young people back then were so desperate to find a new route to freedom. Bob Dylan’s concert in 1966 was so legendary because Bob Dylan turned from a folksinger into a rock star by changing his acoustic guitar to an electric guitar in the middle of the concert. Bob going electric influenced Rock ’n’ Roll, which in turn changed these young people’s minds and it started the revolution. I just wanted to honour Bob and that moment in time because I feel there is no hero in music that is young right now.

Do you play Dylan for encouragement?

When I sing Mr. Tambourine Man, I remember being five in a room full of crazy adults on drugs. Probably the most wild place I’ve ever been in my life was in my childhood. My parents were young when they had me, and I wasn’t raised by them until I was five. And when I met them, it was like taking a trip down another dimension. It was the seventies, anything could go. So when I remember Mr. Tambourine Man, it kind of felt like it shut the room up. It shut the loudness up in my head. It was something I could focus on. It felt like church. It felt like Santa Claus. It gave me faith, that there was something more beautiful and real, something like a safe space that wasn’t filled with all this smoke and all these gross men. When I now sing Mr. Tambourine Man to these audiences, I always dedicate it to their childhood.

Generations of music critics, fans and musicians have been busy interpreting the lyrics of this song. What is so special about it?

That song, I feel, unites us because of that vital ingredient of the belief in goodness and humanity. It’s so powerful, like a hymn from the bible, and I really feel like a hero character in Bob Dylan lyrics. And he says he’s “just a ragged clown behind”. Since I’ve been singing it, I’ve realized, that he might possibly be speaking about himself. He might have to be the one to stand up and sing to the people because there’s no one to follow. When people tell me, your music means a lot to me, you’re a hero of mine, it really moves me because maybe this song saved my life one night.